My household is massive on Kenji’s channa masala. With staple components like canned chickpeas and tomatoes, ginger, garlic, and some fundamental spices, it doesn’t take lengthy to place collectively, so it’s a straightforward method to get a flavorful dinner on the desk, particularly on a weeknight. And whereas it’s a brilliant easy recipe, the dish is rarely good except I make it—or so my household says—so I’m tasked with channa masala-ing at the least as soon as a month. The fantastic thing about this month-to-month ritual is that I’ve zeroed in on one approach that basically cuts down on cooking time: including baking soda to hurry up the method of browning onions. It’s such an impactful tip that I’ve began utilizing it in different dishes, and it saves me about 5 to 10 minutes, slicing the onion cooking time nearly in half. Right here’s how. 

What Occurs When You Add Baking Soda to Onions

PH has a big effect on the Maillard response, a chemical course of that encourages browning in meals when they’re heated. The upper the pH, the quicker the response happens. Onions are solely at a pH stage of round 5 out of 14, making them a extra acidic ingredient, however an alkaline ingredient like baking soda can improve the pH stage of onions, encouraging browning in a shorter period of time. 

Baking soda additionally softens onions; its excessive pH stage, which ranges from 8.3 to 9, weakens the pectins within the greens, inflicting their cell partitions to interrupt down. The quicker the onions break down, the quicker chemical substances are launched, which implies not solely quicker cooking, but additionally quicker taste and coloration growth. 

Easy methods to Add Baking Soda to Your Onions to Pace Browning

Incorporating baking soda into your recipes to hurry up onion browning is easy. Warmth oil in a skillet or no matter vessel you propose to cook dinner the onions in, then add your chopped, sliced, or diced onions, adopted instantly by the baking soda. You’ll wish to use about 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda per one pound of onions. Be certain that the baking soda is evenly integrated with the onions, then permit the onions to cook dinner till starting to brown, stirring often. As soon as the onions begin to go away a brown coating on the pan, add one tablespoon of water and scrape up all of the brown bits. Repeat this course of till the onions are a deep brown coloration. The entire course of ought to take about 10 minutes for diced onions cooked over medium-high warmth, however you may want to regulate the time primarily based on how finely the onions are reduce.

When You Ought to—and Should not—Add Baking Soda to Onions

Whereas this system is nice for rapidly browning your onions, there are a couple of caveats. The way in which the baking soda breaks down the onion ends in it shedding quite a lot of its form and taking over a softer, nearly mushy texture. For a dish like channa masala or butter hen the place the onions are supposed to mix in with the sauce, that’s not an issue—you wouldn’t need crunchy onions studded all through dishes like these anyway. However if you need your onions to retain their construction in a recipe like French onion soup or Oklahoma-style onion burgers, you’ll wish to skip this system fully, in any other case you’ll find yourself with gloopy onions all through your dish. And whereas this tip does pace up browning time, it nonetheless takes about 10 minutes, which is why Swetha Sivakumar skips onions fully in her 10-minute chana masala recipe. 

Strain Cooked Hen

Higher Strain Cooker Butter Hen

Baking soda additionally prevents onions from turning into too candy, which, once more, is warranted in sure dishes. However this hack gained’t assist in recipes that depend on the candy, caramelized taste of onions. Given the typically soapy notes that baking soda may give off, you’ll wish to be sure that the dish you’re utilizing it in has sufficient flavors to masks that. 

It’s additionally essential to notice that whereas this system works with white, yellow, and pink onions, the baking soda does give pink onions a bluish-green coloration that, in my expertise and opinion, shouldn’t be very interesting. However as soon as the onions are integrated with different components to kind a sauce, the colour isn’t usually noticeable. 

The Takeaway

Including baking soda if you’re cooking onions is a good way to hurry up the browning course of. Nevertheless, this system works finest in recipes that don’t depend on (1) onions retaining their construction or (2) the candy taste of onions. However in case you’re like me and need (or, actually, are compelled) to whip up a channa masala each month, baking soda is simply what you should save on time.